January 18, 2008
Robot Sex Studies: Cyberpunked Living is On Its Way!
David Levy’s book, Love + Sex with Robots gives us yet another affirmation of Gibson’s belief that cyberpunked living is already here. In Love + Sex with Robots, Levy combines research in artificial intelligence and robotics with a cultural analysis indicating that more and more people have stopped interacting in person - that they are more alone than ever before and can no longer manage the complexity that are human relationships. The answer? Buy your own sexy fembot! In the next 5 to 10 years, Levy posits we’ll have full-featured sexbots that will allow us to “love the one you’re with,” while 40 years later, we’ll have fembots that we can fall in love and have a relationship with!
“Love with robots will be as normal as love with other humans, while the number of sexual acts and lovemaking positions commonly practiced between humans will be extended, as robots teach more than is in all of the world’s published sex manuals combined.”
I’ve Fallen In Love With My Ipod! - If Only it Had a Dildo Attachment… Levy rightly points out that we have a long and varied history of love affairs with our toys. From our children’s insane connections to Furbies and Tamagotchies, to adults’ less-than-healthy attachment to cars, guns, fancy laptops, cell phones and yes, even Ipods (I TRULY love my Ipod), its hardly a stretch to carry these feelings to our favorite pleasure toys. So, if our pleasure toys improved to the degree that say, our music listening devices have, what types of conversations would we be having about them? We are already seeing some incredible advances in love dolls - the picture above comes from orient-doll.com, which clearly has spent a lot of time researching the subject. its only a natural to combine these with robot-enabled capabilities. So do I see only another 5 years for Cherry 1000s to hit the marketplace? Yeah, I see that.
Is Love a Singular Fantasy? In looking at our relationships with our toys, what does this imply about love as a concept? Does this just turn into a singular fantasy, where all of our motivations turn into a external machine-assisted masturbation sessions? Can we really love something inanimate and non-living? Levy posits that romantic love is a continuation of the process of attachment, a well-known and well-studied phenomenon in children but less studied in adults. That attachment is a feeling of affection, usually for a person but sometimes for an object or even for an institution such as a school or corporation. In this sense, Levy seems to be lessening the importance of two mutual-causal systems (people) interacting to form a new set of interactions - that its all just internal fantasies of both participants. While I don’t doubt that the attachment of toys is somehow linked, I think its a vast stretch to say that this explains the love between two adults. Something else occurs here - something systemic. The attachment phenomena implies control over an object, whereas love is based on mutual compromise in the pursuit of something greater - something that grows and morphs in unpredictable ways as time proceeds. If a robot develops sentience, this seems like a very different question, but as long as we’re looking at robots imitating sentience, it seems to me we really don’t have love - we have something else entirely.
If Robots Develop Sentience, Will They Still Love Us? In thinking about a long term problem with this future trend, what happens if/when we start developing robots with sentience and self-awareness? It seems to me that unless this occurs, you really can’t have marriage between humans and robots, as the whole notion of “I Do” implies free will. If they “do” develop freewill, doesn’t think imply they can change their programming? And if so, lets say I go to my “build your own Toyota Fembot” site and make one to fit my exact bizarre sexual absurdities - why would this robot want to keep this programming? If they do have freewill, perhaps they won’t really be interested in fulfilling a 90 year-old’s BDSM fantasies, anymore than say, a human would. So at best, this seems like a situation where fembots (or their male counterparts) would have to be programmed as a really advanced dildo, without sentience. This to me implies that sentient robot mail-order-brides for will probably work about as well as they do now (does this mean Russia will corner the market here as well?).
So Is Cyberpunked Living Here? When we’ve moved from conversations about what post-humanity is toward conversations about people looking forward to the latest in love doll technology as a cure for mass loneliness, I think its safe to say that cyberpunked living will soon be arriving in a large package near you. In looking at some of the conversations that Levy’s book as spurned, we some interesting discussions. For instance, Clay Breshears ends his post with this but hopeful message to the lonely:
I wonder, though, with video games, virtual worlds, and online social networking taking up so much of people’s time, haven’t we already started down that slippery slope? Still, at least with a love-bot by our side, we’ll have one compatible friend/mate with us at the fall of civilization.
Not Surprisingly, most Christian blogs don’t think too much of this idea. They seemed quite concerned that a cyberpunked society may not be in our collective best interest. This sentiment from Walter Dimmock’s blog sort of captures the point:
This does not get any weirder, humans having sex and marrying robots. What kind of family will result of this? But in our post-modern liberal society anything goes as far as the imagination allows, without reference to the negative repercussions to these insane ideas.
Eric, on Classicalvalues.com asks an interesting question about virtual control of the sexbots (which would probalby come far earlier than 2050):
I know this is all theory, but I’m wondering whether it might be possible for us to actually become the sex robots and have sex remotely with their partners. Like, I control your robot, and you control mine. More interactive than a mere machine, and there’d still be the human element. Nah, that’s no good, because someone at the controls might be charged with rape. Or he or she might be raped by someone else’s robot.
Probably not a good idea to give someone remote control over “your” robot. Why, think about what else might happen.
Fritz Lahnam from the Houston Chronicle has a great overview of the book, as well as a decent assessment of the response its generated, not to mention a question about how Levy’s wife would feel about this:
Levy has been amazed at the publicity the Love and Sex With Robots has generated since its release last month. He’s done a dozen radio interviews and a TV interview. Howard Stern raved about the book. So far, no hate mail.
Would Levy himself have sex with a robot? He doesn’t have to ponder the question.
“If there was a robot of the sort I describe in the book, I would certainly want to experience using it for sex, and I wouldn’t regard it as anything untoward,” he said. “I would do it out of curiosity. Not that I have a need for a new sex partner. I’m happily married.”
And the wife would be OK with this?
“Yes, yes, and if she wanted to try one I wouldn’t have a problem with that. I would regard it as genuine scientific curiosity.”
So yeah, this whole topic has certainly created some interesting memes going forward. One wonders how the nature of conversation will morph in the next 5-10 years, as the first stages of “fembotness” become a reality. Whether or not anyone likes it, our society is continuing on a rather bizarre vector - one which is affected by increased interconnectedness, an ever-increasing technology revolution positive feedback cycle, and an ever-increasing sense of alienation on the part of many. And to think, previously the conservative values folks were worried about “strange human” relationships. I wouldn’t be surprised if their collective heads explode as this latest trend gets dollars and advertising behind it. gets power and money behind it.
EDIT: iammany, in a comment below points to a wonderful analysis of Levy’s book by Steven Shaviro. In addition to hitting on the love/freewill conundrum in a more sophisticated way than I did (asking “How can robots be both rational subjects, and infinitely manipulable objects?”), Shaviro also questions the basis of Levy’s prediction:
If I find Levy’s claims extremely dubious, it is not because I think that human intelligence (or mentality) somehow inherently defies replication. But such replication is an extremely difficult problem, one that we are nowhere near to resolving. It certainly isn’t just a trivial engineering issue, or a mere quantitative matter of building larger memory stores, and more powerful and more capacious computer chips, the way that Levy (and other enthusiasts, such as Ray Kurzweil) almost always tend to assume. AI research, and the research in related fields like “emotional computing,” cannot progress without some fundamental new insights or paradigm shifts. Such work isn’t anywhere near the level of sophistication that Levy and other boosters seem to think it is. Levy wildly overestimates the successes of recent research, because he underestimates what “human nature” actually entails. His models of human cognition, emotion, and behavior are unbelievably simplistic, as they rely upon the the inanely reductive “scientific” studies that I mentioned earlier.
Agreed. The transformation from an imitation of sentience to the creation of an actual synthetic sentient life form is a hugely significant and complex change. At that point, the perspective of creating cool sex toys to service socially inept geeks ends up being about as morally dubious as the creation and use of the dolls found in Ghost in the Shell: Innocence.
Comments
January 18, 2008
iammany said:
Steve Shaviro wrote an interesting piece about the book here: http://www.shaviro.com/Blog/?p=614
Dave Carrol said:
Wow…
that kinda freaks me out
ha
Dave
SFAM said:
Great find, iammany, I will include this above. And Dave, coming from someone who likens opinions to armpits (your latest blog entry - complete with pictures!), I would guess it takes a LOT to freak you out!
Klaw said:
http://reversecowgirlblog.blogspot.com/2007/06/unporny-valley.html
The uncanny valley (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncanny_Valley) is an interesting study of robots and how people perceive them…. the “unporny valley” was an amusing twist on that including all forms of sexuality.
January 19, 2008
Klaw said:
Interestingly there was a sitcom in the 1960 My Living Doll starring Julie Newmar from Batman about a psychologist who builds a fembot, and all his male cohorts go after her, and hilarity ensues. Point being this is a fascination as old as Metropolis in film, going back as far as the Greek myth of Pygmalion and Galatea.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9xhZ6xOy714
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_Living_Doll
February 25, 2008
Rasputin said:
The uncanny valley is not a study but a speculation, in my opinion. Though I think that even if its false, it will be a self fullfiling(sp?) prophecy.
I find David Levy extremly optimistic. The claim that we will have those andoirds on the market in 5-10 years sounds odd. The coolest robots today (you wrote about one of them, a japanese dude made ‘em) are rather clumsy and can’t do much. They also cost a fortune.
I would like the philip dick android in my room.
February 26, 2008
Synthoid said:
Sounds like we’re going to need to get the Blade Runner unit up and running.
Nesstar said:
I want to have robo sex with Summer Glau…
March 5, 2008
Spurtybotter said:
100 years for the total adoption and refinement cycle, I’d say. But interesting cultural changes are happening now, and its important for ‘future historians’ to track this meme. SpurtBOT is a weblog that is tracking this particular meme…
http://www.spurtbot.com/
Mark Fleming said:
Great article! I plugged it in a post in my HomeRobots.com site:
http://www.homerobots.com/blog/robot-sex-studies/
And nice site; never saw it before.
(I did a trackback, but I don’t see it here in the comments)
March 14, 2008
The Next Twenty Years » Blog Archive » Robot Sex Studies: Cyberpunked Living is On Its Way! said (pingback):
[…] while 40 years later, we’ll have fembots that we can fall in love and have a relationship with! [ read more ] Categories: Robotics/ Nanotech, UncategorizedTags: Robotics, Wild Cards var staf_confirmtext = […]
March 16, 2008
Omake said:
And how long until robots cut us out of the entire loop, leave us alone with no one?
March 25, 2008
The Doc said:
Actually, that could be avoided entirely, by programming the robots to never do that. I’m putting this very simply, because the words just don’t want to come, but really, it would all be a matter of programming, and possibly ethics, as if we were to give androids AI, and possibly self-awareness, then would such restrictions be immoral? Maybe I’m just over thinking this. In all seriousness, it’s just a matter of programming, and the programmer’s stance on AL rights and such.
-The Doc
March 29, 2008
Fuchikoma said:
I know it isnt a very useful thing to point but the guy in the picture reminded me of the villain in lazy town.
sincerely xD.
March 30, 2008
CMSAM said:
but the ipod *does* have a dildo attachment…
April 9, 2008
sinewalker said:
Considering this Wired article about Asperger’s syndrome and it’s apparent rise in sillicon valley, perhaps we have found a “cure” for the epidemmic after all?
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/9.12/aspergers_pr.html
It would certainly seem to offer an alternative to assortative mating that seems to be a natural consequence of bringing a lot of geeks together in one place…
May 9, 2008
sdff said:
sdfsdf
May 12, 2008
ricky said:
give me a prpoer fit robot plzz
May 13, 2008
Anonymous said:
wooooooooooooooow
May 16, 2008
naa9eer said:
I wish more of this beautiful Modia
Accept Greetings
Nasser
Saudi Arabia
May 17, 2008
Anonymous said:
et
mari mensa said:
this is not coool
May 18, 2008
youssef said:
hiiiiiiiiiiiii
Anonymous said:
是啥呢 看也看不懂呢
May 22, 2008
chodismuffin said:
this is mega gay and not natural so booooooooooooo
tfaasavalu said:
this site is awusome…lol…I wonder if there are people walking in this world are machines already???? well, who knows. maybe Im one of them.
fahad Basher said:
hi
May 23, 2008
SADVFAFG said:
DSGSFDGSDSFGSFG
devil_gagz11 said:
fddfsd
nina said:
ja bi se sexala al neznam skim pa ako ima ko nek se javi ?????
June 23, 2008
Com Wedge said:
latest link:
http://www.engadget.com/2008/06/22/robots-to-be-our-lovers-by-2050-not-just-in-massachussetts/
July 29, 2008
leila said:
Why are they all female? Don’t women like having sex?
RoBo said:
The iPod vibrator can work with other audio sources, and is called the OhMiBod.
Here’s where I first learned about it:
http://tv.boingboing.net/2008/02/01/robo-goes-to-a-sex-e.html
August 4, 2008
terminator said:
cyborg is possible but robot its a dumb thing
August 6, 2008
Wow said:
i was cruising porn randomly and saw this pretty hot chick..
then i do the website and its like, holy shit its not a real chick! !!!!!!!
I found it amusing.
August 10, 2008
god of sex said:
this is pretty cool, if they do make it, they should put it in sex stores and only if u r 25 and above. but there all woman, like iam a man and i like woman, but if girls watch man porn or sumthing, they should like make somthing like a robo man
August 18, 2008
tailor said:
modernage.does’nt need a woman to have sex hahahaha
August 21, 2008
synthetic_creature said:
this is fascinating. planning on reading levy’s book. onward toward the cyberpunked-future!!
Adult Digest said:
Very nice and interesting article. I will paste the link from my site to yours here. Thanks.
www.success-empire.com/blog/adultdigest
September 4, 2008
clod said:
how in the hell do we get ot of here
October 1, 2008
visitor said:
these photos make me think of that will smith movie IRobot
October 2, 2008
kiss mah arse said:
screwing robots wont mean you all lost your virginity
it will just make people laugh at you even more for being pathetic losers
i hope you realize that
October 4, 2008
Adam Daub said:
The quicker they place sexdroids on the market the quicker all this moron-breeding ceases.
October 14, 2008
hmm said:
i lolled
October 26, 2008
sali said:
i need to lovely girl soon
October 30, 2008
HyperSniper said:
I want a robot to have sex with…
November 7, 2008
Kybernetik said:
I agree with Dave that it’s Levy underestimates the complexity of the human brain, and howmuch we know about it - but I think that there are more points indicating that we have to wait a little longer for sexbots to flood the sex-toy marked.
First of all, I don’t think the mainsream society would just greed simply greed this idea with arms open. I just think that the whole sexbot-kink would be taboo, which would make it harder for it to get popular. Too many people would consider it “freakish” to even talk about having sex with your robot, and my guess is that this wuld refrain lot’s of people from bying their own sexbot.
Second of all, the prize of a real sex-robot has to be overwhelming for the common man/woman - not before sexbots can be manufactured cheap will they get “normal” - and not before they are widespread can we say that cyberpunked living is here.
— Kyber
December 1, 2008
jaylene said:
im a sex adict dats was up
December 2, 2008
kabukiman said:
People don’t need to talk about making sex with a robot. All they need is to actually make sex with it. It’s like other things, what is taboo today, will be perfectly acceptable latter. Remember what was talking about gays some decades ago.
Adam Daub said:
Considering how neurotic and augmented the women in america are becoming robot sex might not be too much different.
Then again, a robot doesn’t act fickle and only want it’s mates to have money.
Hmm… perhaps that’s why the majority of women these days are literally craving abuse… maybe it’s just a way for them to get the jump on emotionless robot companions of the future.
December 4, 2008
Messicus said:
yes yes, I like where this idea is going. I’d rather be with a fembot who I can love after spending a long time at the computer working from home than hear a woman nag all day long because I have work to do.
December 19, 2008
Jessica said:
this is like going to be the end of the world for us, if everyone starts doing this then their won’t be babies anymore, and we’ll become extinct.
January 3, 2009
Creatrix said:
Fembots are all well and good, but what about the females of the species? I’d like to have my own ‘male’ sex bot! I wouldn’t have to deal with neuroses, snoring and the not bothering to shave.
I think this could be the best thing for humanity as women and men have been taught to be almost totally socially incompatible with one another from birth onwards.
It’s not quite so bad in the UK (I’m speaking more anecdotally than empirically here) where there are some social commonalities and well read and intellectual men who are also in touch with their feelings are readily available (just gatecrash andy University gig and there are plenty in abundance) as are more amazonian women who love mechanics and logistics and people who are in the middle of the gender spectrum but who are still sexually male or female. It makes life a lot happier, but unfortunately in the US the gender divide is so pronounced (so large companies can sell exactly the same products in different packages to both sexes! e.g L’oreal wrinkle de-crease for the men and pink toolkits for the ladies, even though both the sexes like exactly the same thing) That we’ve forgotten that the only difference is a measly extra 50% of DNA from the X Chromosome if you’re a girl which are built in safety mechanisms to prevent the foetus from aborting, and a few milligrams of testosterone if you’re a boy. It’s not a case of never the twain shall meet, it’s a case of we’ve met, and society has pushed us apart again through advertising, mind numbingly dull soap operas and sit coms and possibly attribution bias.
Just as a side note- not all women want their mates money (I don’t like my boyfriend spending money on me. I have my own cash for that.).
As for reproduction I’m pretty sure that people will be able to reproduce parthenogenetically using female eggs, or through going down to the sperm bank and collecting a sample and thus cut out the middle man. The Robot man could even take the place of the father and a fem bot in a different family its mother if the models are sophisticated enough. I get the feeling however that this may make for some very confused and maladjusted children until they learn exactly where they came from…
January 5, 2009
Anonymous said:
fuck you
January 7, 2009
bob said:
dude that is sick wrong and completely unnatural
January 25, 2009
normal person said:
normal people who have penises larger than 2 inches… Get themselves what we normal people call… A girlfriend! Now now, i know ur all intrigued and thats why i’m going to do u all a favour and explain… A girlfriend is someone of a human nature… Because surprise surprise she is one! Now… This is where things get interesting, girlfriends also have a sex drive like men do… They then have sex with you with their real pussy and their real ass, tits and mouth… Now if ur not one for a commited relationship go to the nearest club and find urself a fuck buddy for the night, simple! Robots are simultations of the real thing it can never be the same as the real thing unless you implant a dead person’s vagina into a toaster or something weird but that would be kinda gross and just, no… So the moral of this story is GET LAID!! get off ur nintendos and get urself lookin like a player and get some real pussy don’t dream about gettin ur dick wet in some well oiled cogged machine! Thats weird! Can u guys not see!? Ah well i’ve made my point and i am going to go have amazing sex with my lass now, ha! See ya later x
January 28, 2009
Anonymous said:
u wy cant i be female robot bitch itedbe easyaaa
k pimpin said:
k
January 29, 2009
freekazoid said:
Well you call head on over to RealDoll.com and check em out they’re already in production, just not robotic. I’m sure as soon as the technology is out there realdoll will pick it up. Can you image, being able to send them a pic of your dream girl or guy and they can build it for ya, all you’d need is a voice recording and a pic of your fantasy person and viola. 4 - 6,000 dollars later you’ve got your soul mate in a box at your door, they did an episode of it on Real Sex on HBO.
February 1, 2009
normal person said:
anyone listenin to me!? Get a girlfriend! Jesus!
July 1, 2009
QWERTY said:
Robots will change the way women act. If they want a real living man. They won’t be so stuck on themselves
July 2, 2009
Stormtrooper of Death said:
our company sells sex robots: 60K $ is the cheapest version. A robot that can walk, talk, and have sex. with a dumb AI chip.
for about $150K you have a better sex robot, that can have interesting conversations, remembers who you are, can go shopping, do the dishes, etc.
for about $3 billion , you have a robotic wife, that can do all the things a real woman can, and even better. When you dont like her , just push the off button.
so, in the 21th century, there are many fem-bots. Not only sex bots, but also relation bots.
Some people are ugly, or have a severe body handicap, but still need love, then a relation/sex robot comes in handy, to replace a human female.
but remember, that a robot will never be able to replace for 100% a real female human. The difrence still is there, birth… giving birth to little babies, thats one thing for sure, that robots are (yet) not able. The rest they can.
interested in a sex or a relation/romantic robot ? We sell male and female versions. Go to this website for more information:
http://www.androidworld.com/
July 19, 2009
normal person said:
i thought i may have got through to u people but obviously not… Get a girlfriend get down to the nearest club, see some one u like start by lookin at them get their attention, then introduce urself and take them home! Its called getting a life! Why wait and read into robot love when u can quite easily go out there and get it urself even if u are ugly, go get some ugly chick its still love and u don’t have to pay thousands of dollors for a few cogs that say i love u and have a hole big enough for ya penis… Get a life people!
Just Another Guy said:
Normal person, are you so pathetic that you have to get your rocks off insulting people on the internet? Oh wow, aren’t you special. Passing judgment on others while you yourself are not without sin. You’ve obviously got some sort of vested interest in the subject of sex-bots. Why is that? Not getting any? You must be aware that finding that “special” someone is much more difficult than it’s shown on TV. In fact I’d be willing to bet that you are not, in fact, getting any. So why don’t you quit trolling and get a real life. Hm? It’s not difficult, it just requires you to pick your fat, lazy ass up, off your couch and (horror of horrors!) actually GO OUTSIDE. Mahalo.
July 20, 2009
Freakazoid said:
EY, Normal Person. I guess you don’t yet understand how the real world works, so let me explain it to you. I guess you also don’t understand the concept of reality, being a spectrum just like the range of possiblities each and every one of us has to live with from birth to death. Let’s say a 6 year old child, a boy who has never experienced death before, witnessess a 20 year old drug dealer beat his infant daughter to death. Then 2 months later, having no sexual experience or understanding, is forced to eat the shit out of his much older step brother’s ass. Then is forced to live with his step father who made him do it for 17 years, keeping it a secret because when it happened he didn’t understand what was being done to him. He has to stay repressed because if he comes out of it while living with the guy who did this to him he would probably kill everyone in the house and subconsciously he knows he would spend the rest of his life in a nut house. Then finally his mother divorces his step father and he comes out of repression and tries to kill himself 17 times in a row but can’t commit to the final act. Now the touch of human flesh makes him vomit or become so angry that even as a repressed teenager when a girl tried to kiss him he grabbed her head and tried to throw her through a sliding glass door. Do you think that this kind of person would benifit from an invention that would suite the needs of this, what I like to call just another “Normal Human Being”, which is exactly what this person is becuase there are millions like him out there, or do you think this person should be forced after a life of torture to have to let his brain eat itself from the inside out. Or maybe you would have this person stroll down to the nearest club and start picking up girls to bring back to his place so he can cut them up into little pieces and make himself a little Dirty Blonde Clam Chowder?
July 27, 2009
Cendres said:
Oh, hell no.
He can go and clean his oh-so-precious dick in a robot-pussy. This is Salvation and apeasment, for sure.
July 28, 2009
downer said:
Just for fun
http://www.doggieloverdoll.com/releaseIN.htm
July 31, 2009
Xeran said:
Can’t wait for the day of robot girls to come true, check out this site for more robot girls www.synthoids.com.
August 9, 2009
downer said:
Small EMA by Sega coming soon
http://www.fun-on.com/technology_robot_girlfriend.php
September 8, 2009
Xeran said:
December 17, 2009
HoHo said:
Naa people will just put them on credit,lol
December 18, 2009
SilentWarlock said:
Ma jel? Dojdi da ti pokažem svog robota
December 21, 2009
Hi said:
ot should be used for masturbration.
January 25, 2010
Mediocrates said:
Much simpler to turn humans into cyborgs than to turn robots into humans. Here’s ‘robot sex’ in the future:
A hot cutie sees you from across the room. He/she wirelessly sends you a Heart, which you’ll see on a little HUD msg from your retinal implants. You send one back, signaling your interest. Just like a Facebook friend request, all your pertinent information pops up in an easy-to-reference augmented-reality menu, granting temporary access to your stats. In a few moments, you’ve sized each other up in everything from blood type to what kind of relationship you’re looking for. Before you’ve spoken a single word, you already know everything you wanted to. The whole ‘interview’ process of dating has been streamlined to the temporal equivalent of a tweet, and you’re free to get on with having fun together. No questions about ‘what are you thinking?’ either - just check my status message if you’re curious. And don’t worry about STDs or unwanted pregnancy, either; cybernetic implants will have given us far greater conscious control over our body’s functions.
Conversation will become something different, more formal and ritualized. Non-verbal communication will become the norm. In many ways, we will have become the Borg; though I predict that our love of individuality will continue - the ‘collective’ will be something that we can tap into, rather than something we’re assimilated by; much like what the Web is now. Call it a biological Internet connection. There’ll be downsides, naturally; like an almost complete lack of privacy. But considering how some people inanely post every moment of their lives online, I doubt that’d be a huge leap to make *now*, let alone decades from now.
That’s my projection, based on our increasingly obsessive techno-fetish. I think it’s more likely than robotic AI, though I’d be interested to see that happen too…